Beat the heat

I have this problem that my laptop often shuts down during gameplay due to high temperature. This is a safety feature to protect the CPU from burning up, so it’s a good thing, but it happens with zero warning. If there was a way to see when the temperature gets dangerously close to the max, you might be able to shut down the game in time.

So I used Real Temp for a while (version 3.60), which would sound an alarm as soon as temperature reached a user-selected level. Problem is, the alarm would often be drowned out by the sounds in the game.

Then I found something called ATI Tray Tools, which among other things can show the CPU temperature on the gaming screen (OSD). This lets me keep an eye on things while in the game, and give me the time I need to shut down if necessary (as long as I pay attention anyhow). I found out about it at Tom’s Hardware, which shows a pretty comprehensive tutorial, and the tool itself can be downloaded here.